WoW Factor: World of Warcraft’s market saturation and the pull of vague memories

Here’s something a little different: Usually, before I write a World of Warcraft column (or any column), my assumptions and data are pretty firm before I put them down on paper, else I wouldn’t be writing it in the first place. This is one of the reasons that, for example, I spent so much time showing my work when trying to predict the launch date for Battle for Azeroth; that was all about hard numbers, so it was easy to check math and assumptions in an obvious fashion.

But in this particular case I’m exploring a concept that I’m still playing with and researching, something that may turn out to be somewhat erroneous. To wit: I suspect World of Warcraft expansions have switched from selling to existing customers and into reclaiming old customers as a primary design focus.

It might seem like an odd assertion, but I think it’s an interesting thing to consider and may help shed light on a number of design decisions, several of which I think are pretty bad ones. But for this particular column I’m not interested in analyzing the merits of design choices; I’m interested in presenting the evidence and showing how it lines up in a more neutral fashion. Because I think it can shape some interesting thinking.

First of all, let me make one thing clear: Beyond a certain point, any and all discussion of subscription numbers for WoW is purely speculative because Blizzard stopped giving out subscriber numbers. This is for obvious reasons because the game has remained profitable despite reduced numbers, and there’s a whole lot of analysis to be done about that when the game doesn’t really lean heavy into its cash shop. There’s even a dearth of cosmetic armor there, which is usually a mainstay; new releases on the cash shop are rare and usually specific mounts or pets, often with charity donations. But the company has stopped believing that subscriber numbers are a good thing to release.

As part of a report delivered to investors to assure them that yes, all is well in terms of return on investment, this is a reasonable decision. As something analysts like to examine, this is horrible because it means guessing about the numbers beyond a certain point. Knowing the line of overall subscriptions through Legion would be super helpful, but we’re guessing.

However, I think things work just fine with the line that we do have, and the lack of new subscriber numbers tends to indicate that the trend has remained consistent or at least did not reverse.

So let’s start with something that everyone knows, which is also a matter of public record. From its launch in November of 2004 through the early launch days of Cataclysm in 2011, WoW literally never dropped its numbers. Every new announcement from the company was either maintaining the same numbers or announcing another new benchmark. It was only during Cataclysm that numbers actually started to drop.

This is not to say that no one unsubscribed from WoW during that time; speaking purely from anecdotal experience I know that I did at least two times, other people also did, and logically speaking you would assume some churn. The result is that it’s hard to guess how many people have actually played the game in total over time, but the number is almost certainly higher than the game’s peak of 12 million.

Why does the total matter? Because of market saturation.

Market saturation is essentially the point wherein your overall market share is just not going to grow any longer for anything. People know your product exists and either have chosen to buy it, have chosen not to buy it, or have stopped buying it. This is also the point where trying to catch new customers is no longer worth the effort, because you’re chasing people who are just never going to buy in.

For assorted reasons, WoW didn’t hit saturation until after the launch of Cataclysm, but it certainly does seem to have hit that point then. From that point onward, the game’s numbers, or at least the ones we know about, have gone up and down, but they’ve never actually grown beyond 12 million. Again, it’s almost certain the actual number of total players over time is higher, but we don’t have access to that statistic.

Purely for argument’s sake, let’s say that there were exactly as many former players as current players at that time, which would make the market saturation point 24 million. This is, again, a totally arbitrary and speculative number; it could be 20 million, 100 million, or 12.5 million. It just places that at a good middle point.

The point is that by the time we start seeing drops in Cataclysm, we can make the assumption that WoW is a known quantity. Everyone who is a potential player is either currently playing or a former player. And as the numbers slide down, it seems like there’s an obvious shift in focus for expansions, marketing less to the people already playing and more to the people who were playing and left.

Marketing for Cataclysm played this up a little, with the old world revamp and the exploration of places long visible but not accessible in the game. But it clearly wasn’t a major focus because most of these things required knowledge of the game to begin with. You had to be pretty invested in the game to remember Uldum or Grim Batol; they were areas referenced but never seen in the base game. Improvements to the leveling zones made the experience smoother but were clearly touted as something to remove the tedium and design issues for people who had leveled through this many times before.

In Mists of Pandaria we also got a nod to the long-running issue of the Pandaren, who had been used as a background element in the franchise for ages without ever being strictly explored. Still, though, it seems that this expansion was far more marketed at people who were already playing rather than potential returning players.

But then we have Warlords of Draenor, which did two things to really push hard at players who used to play and left. The first was the inclusion of a very well-known region redone and re-imagined, along with a cast list that lots of players likely had dim memories of. You might not remember exactly what their deals were if you were never into the lore, but you know that, say, Gul’dan and Grom Hellscream were important. You know that Outland used to be Draenor. (And you possibly still call it “the Outlands” or “Outlands” or “Stevetown” or some other name that’s completely wrong.) All of this stuff aligns nicely with fuzzy memories.

The other shift? The level boost. Not only can you hop back in with those fuzzy memories, you can do so without having to go through the process of catching up. The game will catch you up and drop you into the experience right away!

From a marketing perspective, this worked like a charm. Subscriptions jumped by nearly 3 million between the end of Mists and the launch of Warlords. People came back! Admittedly, the game’s next month saw another subscription drop that was actually lower than the nadir of Mists, but from the standpoint of reclaiming people in that departing group? It worked, albeit temporarily.

Subsequently, Legion and Battle for Azeroth have both leaned in on this. Legion contained artifacts, several of which occupy that fuzzy memory space (“yeah, the Ashbringer was a big deal, right?”), and it also contains zones that seem to be functionally designed as WoW’s Greatest Hits. People like Tauren, so here’s a Tauren zone. People like druids, so here’s the druid zone. Remember that whole storyline about Blood Elves withering away without magic? The Nightborne hit that same story beat-for-beat, without ever tying it to factional conflict (that would come later).

And Battle for Azeroth? Please note that while the Allied Races introduced as pre-order bonuses are races that you would be familiar with only if you’d been playing the game at the time, the ones coming with the expansion are right back into that fuzzy memory space. You remember Dark Iron Dwarves and Zandalari Trolls and Mag’har Orcs and something about Kul Tiras, right? You might not remember exactly what their deals were, but you can play them now and you get a level boost to catch right back up. Vague memories propel you back.

Whether or not this is a good thing is a discussion for another day, but I think this adds an extra dimension to discussion of standalone expansions and to understanding overall design decisions. There are a number of choices going on here that make perfect sense if you think about the developers are not trying to court new players or existing ones but trying to recapture players who did play at one point and are curious to come back. And letting them do so without having to catch up? There’s a reason for that, too.

Feedback, of course, is welcome down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. There’s a lot more analysis to be done here and discussion about where good and bad decisions come into play, but as stated the point here was to present the concept rather than dissect it. Putting everything into this framework explains a lot of decisions, even if it doesn’t make them right.

War never changes, but World of Warcraft does, with a decade of history and a huge footprint in the MMORPG industry. Join Eliot Lefebvre each week for a new installment of WoW Factor as he examines the enormous MMO, how it interacts with the larger world of online gaming, and what’s new in the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor.

Just look at the graphics of this more than 15 year old game: new players are totally put off by the look alone, it costs them a lot of overcoming to start a new game this ugly. Old players on the other hand have dealt with the look at least once and possibly don’t mind, since they remember the game emotionally and got a foot in the door. So it’s way easier to lure the veterans back than convince the spoiled new ones.

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1 year ago

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SirUrza

I’m not sure I agree that allied races are there to bring back people.. I think they’re there to keep people. Right now someone can’t pick up the game and make a Nightborne. They have to go grind a whole lot of reputation (that hasn’t been nerfed) just to get the ability to make one… then if they want the armor and mount, they have to level it, not boost it. They introduced this at the end of legion, not at the beginning.

Come BFA the new allied races will be in the same boat. Get your BFA reps up to unlock them. So a new player can’t just come back and make a Mag’har Orc. They need to come back, buy the expansion, grind the reputation, and then start a new character.

To me it seems like Allied races are about extending the life of the game for the existing subscribers, not draw new ones in.

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1 year ago

Author

Eliot Lefebvre

I hate quoting myself, but….

Please note that while the Allied Races introduced as pre-order bonuses are races that you would be familiar with only if you’d been playing the game at the time, the ones coming with the expansion are right back into that fuzzy memory space

And it’s important to note as well that most of the things you need to do to unlock these races are, just like with the Legion-based races, things that you are already going to be doing if you’re playing. It’s not a matter of going out of your way to unlock them; it’s a matter of continuing to do the same things you’re already doing.

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1 year ago

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Sally Bowls

Remember that JG (studio head) said wildstar’s target audience was former wow players. JG was ex wow and he said for mmos about 10% of mmo players leave every month and half don’t return. which means half do. ( every four seconds a player leaves wow or teso) My guess is that the leaving and returning % have both increased.

Over 4 and a half years ago the wow info graphic was that they had over a hundred million accounts. Ergo, IMO, 124 M or 150 M is a better current estimate than 24m. So unrealistically if all current players left and ten % of former players returned, it would be a financial success.

During the silly wow is dieting days, ghostcrawler said the people leaving wow was not up much it was that returning players were down resulting in drop in current/net subs.

The cheapest customer to get is existing players, then former, then wow virgins, then mmo virgins.

I am not sure about primary focus – has 45% become 55%. But I think former players have been a very significant focus for quite a while

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1 year ago

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Eliot Lefebvre

Over 4 and a half years ago the wow info graphic was that they had over a hundred million accounts. Ergo, IMO, 124 M or 150 M is a better current estimate than 24m.

Hey, if you’d rather use that estimate, go nuts; it literally does not matter, like it says. I’m not using it for math, I’m using it to make a point.

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1 year ago

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Danny Smith

Blizzards biggest issue has always been the ‘we are too big to fail and the consumer is locked in, time to change focus for another catchment to add to the pile’ not noticing a portion of the existing consumers become former consumers over time as new things appear to offer what Blizzard let slide ‘because we already got them’. Not just in WoW either.

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1 year ago

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Loopy

I agree with this piece. It’s clear that Blizzard is trying to get the old players back by going back to the basics – war between Alliance and Horde. This is what elevated Warcraft from the very first game (albeit it was humans vs orcs), and it’s what captivated a lot of the original players that were migrating from PVP-centric MMOs of the day.

I also think that it’s a good thing. We’ve had plenty of expansions where we’re fighting the big bad demons/old gods/corrupted whatever, and it’s time to go back to what the game is all about – the conflict between very different civilizations.

What BfA will actually bring once it launches is to be seen. I’m sincerely hoping that we don’t get yet another version of “it was me all along!” type deal with old gods or other influencing entities, and rather accept the fact that Alliance and Horde simply cannot coexist without conflict.

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1 year ago

Author

Eliot Lefebvre

…and rather accept the fact that Alliance and Horde simply cannot coexist without conflict.

So long as there is hackneyed writing, there can never be peace.

In all seriousness, I don’t think this is an inherently bad thing or a good thing; rather, it carries with it a certain set of accompanying decisions, and those decisions can be good or bad, but it helps to consider and pick apart the ethos behind those decisions. Hence why the point made here is that it’s meant to be presented in a neutral tone.

Once you understand why these particular decisions are being made, you can start to examine whether or not these are worthwhile goals, whether or not the decisions made in that direction accomplish those goals, and whether or not there are better choices to be made that might catch some or all of the positives without the negatives.

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1 year ago

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Leiloni

It’s certainly possible that was their goal but I’m not sure either way. I do know that I quit at some point after WoTLK and only hopped into the game very briefly here and there until Legion came out. I came back to the game last year and loved Legion as much or more than WoTLK. I think it’s been one of their best expansions in recent years and so far BfA is looking promising, but obviously too early to tell until it’s out.

So if their goal was to bring back old players, I think they eventually refined that well enough by the time Legion came out because it worked for me and it feels like a lot of other players are in the same boat.

And if there’s any expac that’s going to bring new players, the few that still exist, it seems to be BfA. I’ve seen a number of posts on Reddit and the Forums with brand new players getting into the game and asking for advice.

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1 year ago

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Randy Savage

This is why I think the next expansion after Battle for Azeroth will involve Northrend in some way, whether it’s to deal with Lich King Bolvar or Lich Queen Sylvanas or maybe even the Lich Power Couple of #Bolvanas. They’ve both been single for quite a long time and the hopeless romantic in me believes there is someone out there for everyone. But I digress…

Wrath of the Lich King was the very peak of WoW’s popularity. They’ve already given us the nostalgia feels for other eras of WoW. They’ve yet to go back to Northrend apart from the Death Knight order hall campaign, and that unto itself has some heavy implications.

Methinks they have bigger plans in mind, especially now that Bolvar has been sitting on his icy throne while wearing that helmet for quite awhile and now Sylvanas is waging a war on life itself, using the blight to raise scourglings of her own. Could it be only a matter of time before their paths cross? I wonder…

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1 year ago

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Ashfyn Ninegold

When I was watching the 3 ads that Blizzard put out for BfA, this is exactly what came to mind. Who are these ads for? Not people who already play. People who used to play. The one with the parents and the baby was particularly on the nose.

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1 year ago

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Ben Stone

Draenor tried the whole ‘get players back’ thing by being edgy and going back to Burning Crusade nostalgia after people got annoyed by the similarity to Kung Fu Panda (despite Pandaria actually being one of the best WoW expansions to date). But it didn’t work. The expansion was terrible. Legion just did its own thing and was great, BFA is just continuing on that path using what worked in Legion (mythic+ and world quests).